Diplomacy & Crisis News

In December 2017, President Donald Trump issued his National Security Strategy (NSS), a landmark document that clarified the state of international relations. It recognized that the world had returned to its natural state of great power competition. In truth, great power competition never left, though the collapse of the Soviet Union had created what seemed like a new liberal order where the traditional tenets of realism no longer applied. The NSS noted that this unreal moment had passed and that “after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned.”

President Joe Biden’s NSS, released in November 2022, continued this vision, stating: “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” Biden’s NSS was dressed up as a contest between democracy and autocracy, but it still contained all the elements of realism, from strengthening America’s defense industrial base and expanding alliances to managing the security aspects of trade and waging new kinds of war.

America’s rivals were clearly identified in Trump’s NSS: “China and Russia want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor. Russia seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders.” China received more attention in the 2017 NSS because it is the stronger of the two rival powers, with an economic base larger than the Soviets ever had. Beijing’s break from Communism after its failure in the Soviet Union set it on a vigorous path of growth. But China was also aided by the naïve actions of American corporations fostered by the nostrums of liberal intellectuals who placed hope above history (which was supposedly ending). As Trump’s NSS observed, “[f]or decades, U.S. policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others.”

As to Moscow, the 2017 NSS said, “Russia aims to weaken U.S. influence in the world and divide us from our allies and partners,” adding that “the combination of Russian ambition and growing military capabilities creates an unstable frontier in Eurasia, where the risk of conflict due to Russian miscalculation is growing.” We are in the midst of one of those “miscalculations” in Ukraine. As his invasion enters its second year, President Vladimir Putin appears determined to reverse the outcome of the Cold War and reestablish the Soviet Russian empire, whose collapse he believes was the worst tragedy of the twentieth century. 

Trump’s NSS foresaw the danger that Biden is confronting. “Although the menace of Soviet communism is gone, new threats test our will. Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities.” Trump pushed for NATO members to increase their defense spending to the 2 percent of GDP level they had promised President Barack Obama. He took the issue public and got results. In 2019, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg stated, "I can report on the good progress on burden sharing … European Allies and Canada will have added much more than $100 billion since 2016.”

Trump also authorized the sale of "lethal" military equipment to Ukraine to combat Russian-armed separatists. Though the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 provided for such aid (after Russia had seized Crimea), Obama refused to send weapons to Kyiv, fearing that helping Ukraine defend itself would escalate the conflict. This is the old appeasement view that blames war not on aggression, but on resistance to aggression. Biden initially took an even more pacifist approach to the Russian threat in Europe. As Putin marched his troops around Belarus to test U.S. resolve, Biden assured him that Ukraine was outside the NATO defense perimeter and there would be no military response to Russian aggression. “Unprecedented” sanctions did not deter Moscow any more than they did after Obama declared that Putin’s seizure of Crimea “would not stand.”

The Russian military rolled through the open door, only to be stopped by valiant Ukrainians determined not to lose their freedom to Moscow again. This changed the moral and strategic situation, and the United States and NATO reacted, albeit slowly, to support Kyiv’s resistance. Yet, there are still those who oppose halting aggression in the strategic heart of Europe, and some of them are even in the party of Reagan and Trump. They claim they are “realists,” helping to hijack that term along with left-wing opponents of “imperialism” who want Americans to cease trying to shape the world to its advantage.

Hans J. Morgenthau’s declaration in Politics Among Nations that “international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power” is considered the core of realism. As Morgenthau elaborated, “the struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power.” In this history, he denounced Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policies, which “helped to make the Second World War inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions.” Yet, like so many liberal intellectuals, Morgenthau could not face the application of his theory in the real world. He came out against the Vietnam War (and the Cold War of which it was a part) and, in so doing, engaged in “radical rethinking” to redefine realism as abstaining from the “struggle for power.” This is called prudence, caution, or restraint by its proponents, but in the proper understanding of realism as the international struggle for power, it should be called impotence. Morgenthau advised, "Never put yourself in a position from which you cannot retreat without losing face, and from which you cannot advance without great risks." But what passive position does this permit that could have any chance of influencing events?

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) was one of the “Gang of 20” who delayed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) election as speaker of the House. He was also one of thirty-five Republicans who joined forty-five Democrats in voting against the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed with 350 bipartisan supporters. The NDAA authorized an increase of $80 billion in defense funding and contained a number of specific measures aimed at China and Russia. In his dissent, Good claimed that “we are sending billions of dollars of military equipment and weaponry to Ukraine with no plan or exit strategy.” The congressman knows the plan. Biden’s NSS states that “we will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine as they fight back against Russia’s naked aggression” and will “make Russia’s war on Ukraine a strategic failure.” These are solid, traditional realist objectives. Good’s desire is clearly for an exit strategy without reference to the war’s outcome.

In reaction to such putative conservatives who have gone wobbly on national security policy (and whose minority views are nevertheless spreading on outlets such as Fox and Newsmax), Douglas Murray wrote in National Review: “If you oppose sending American troops around the world, and you oppose arming countries fighting for their own survival, then do you have any remaining foreign policy at all? And if not, for how long do you expect America to remain the dominant power in the world?” In other words, how can you fulfill the proper mission of realism to prevail in great power competition?

And it is a global competition. As NATO’s Stoltenberg recently noted, China is watching the war in Ukraine closely. Chairman Xi Jinping is not happy that the quick victory promised by Putin has failed to materialize. Yet Beijing is testing the resolve of the U.S.-led alliance system not only with intensified military threats against Taiwan and Japan but also with its continued alignment with Moscow. China held joint naval exercises with Russia in September and December, and another is planned for February with the addition of South Africa. Beijing flew a joint “patrol” of strategic bombers with Russia in November that menaced both Japan and South Korea (and the U.S. forces stationed in both countries). China is supplying Russia with computer chips, drones, and other supplies that support Putin’s war effort while buying Russian oil to help finance it. Any wavering of Western resolve that allows Russia to advance in the struggle for power in Europe will have serious repercussions for peace and the balance of power in Asia. That is how the real world works.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who served on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications. 

Image: ID1974/Shutterstock.com.

The United States has gone twenty years without a new presidential doctrine being espoused. While such doctrines—declarations of key foreign policy strategies—are rarely directly declared by a given president, most have been fairly evident to outside observers, as they often represent major shifts in American foreign policy thinking. Generally, doctrines have defined either a single key policy decision a president makes—such as the Carter Doctrine, which declared that the United States would defend the Persian Gulf—or have acted as broad-based prisms through which all foreign policy decisions are made—such as the Nixon Doctrine, which determined the circumstances in which America would aid countries threatened by communism.

Presidential doctrines are not the end-all-be-all of U.S. foreign policy, but they are useful indicators of where America’s metaphorical head is at, especially since they oftentimes cut across ideological lines and are rarely disavowed by succeeding presidents after being declared. As such, when and why different doctrines have been declared have told the story of America’s foreign policy history—as has a lack of declarations.

When the Monroe Doctrine was first declared in the 1820s, announcing to Europe that the Americas were off-limits, no further doctrines were announced for 100 years because none were necessary. But since America became more active abroad in the twentieth century, doctrines have become commonplace: starting with Harry Truman, almost every U.S. president made one. But this nearly unbroken chain ended with George W. Bush. Since the Bush Doctrine, which equated terrorist-financing states with terrorists and approved of preventative war, pre-emptive war, and democracy promotion, no president has announced their own foreign policy doctrine. All three of his successors—Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden—explicitly ran against the Bush Doctrine, but all were ultimately unable to expunge it as none had a clear idea of how to replace it. Obama seemed constantly uncertain and was unable to articulate an Obama Doctrine in an interview for The Atlantic conducted at the end of his administration. The Trump administration, governing during a period of ideological realignment in the GOP, was split between interventionists like John Bolton and Elliot Abrams and the ascendant, internationalism-skeptical national conservatives; as a result, it never settled on a singular Trump Doctrine. At present, the Biden administration also seems uncertain as to what it wants, talking tough on China but declaring them only a competitor, while at the same time trying to be friendly with European states but targeting them with protectionist policies. Biden has talked of seeing the twenty-first century as a war between autocracy and democracy, which could eventually become a Biden Doctrine of sorts, but that view is beset with problems and, in many ways, is just the Bush Doctrine with “terrorism” swapped out for “autocracy.”

The Needs of a New Doctrine

Essentially, America’s foreign policy has been adrift since 2003, clinging to outdated doctrines. This has rendered America utterly unprepared for twenty-first-century threats, primarily the rise of China. But with the 2024 presidential now election beginning in earnest, and Biden acting as a self-declared “transitional” president, presidential candidates on both sides have a unique opportunity to rejuvenate America’s foreign policy with a new doctrine.

Any new doctrine must take a few matters into account. First and foremost, it must redirect attention to America’s national interest. During the Cold War, when the nation needed to be defended against an ideology that could jump borders without a shot fired, an ideologically driven foreign policy framework was more appropriate. But the “ideological” threat that Biden has identified, autocracy, is not a transferrable ideology like Soviet communism was. Nor is Chinese communism, which is in some ways being supplanted with Chinese nationalism—and is likewise non-transferrable.

Second, a new American foreign policy doctrine should also utilize old and existing alliances while reorienting them into being tools of America’s national interest—national interests should not be contorted to serve old alliances, as some would argue is currently happening. While the United States should seriously start focusing more on East Asia, should America totally renege on its treaty commitments and abandon its allies it will likely become impossible to create any meaningful ant-China coalition. Europe, already skeptical of angering China, would at best likely turn neutral, and America abandoning its European allies would guarantee that no smaller East Asian states would trust the word of the United States. The result could be Eurasia falling under China’s thumb (via a Sino-Russian bloc)—a shadow that would ultimately cross the oceans. America would be left attempting to play whack-a-mole with pro-Chinese South American governments.

Third, a new doctrine must be transferrable from administration to administration and be politically tenable to American voters. To win the twenty-first century, America cannot have a foreign policy that vacillates every four to eight years—it must be designed with the long term in mind. Doctrines that have been the most effective at staying relevant have been tied to geographic areas, not to a particular enemy leader or nation (the Truman Doctrine, which called for U.S. support of democracies under threat from communism, was for example clearly targeted at Greece and Turkey—but could be easily extended to include other states).

Finally, any new doctrine must be politically tenable on a domestic level. While presidential elections are rarely won on foreign policy issues, they can be lost on them. Americans will not want to become too withdrawn; the paleoconservative dream of pulling back entirely has never been a majority position. But a policy of going abroad in search of monsters to destroy will certainly wear out its welcome, especially—as we have seen—after two decades of protracted and bloody conflicts.

Monroe+

Merging the two American inclinations—toward pulling back and throwing itself forward—in one doctrine will be a difficult needle to thread. But it can be done by taking into consideration all that America has learned since it came out of its shell, while also going back to its first, and most enduring, presidential doctrine: the Monroe Doctrine.

Call the new doctrine Monroe+. While adding “plus” to well-known brands is currently in vogue in twenty-first-century parlance, it also connotates a further metaphorical and physical meaning. Metaphorically, it takes the original Monroe Doctrine and adds to it, à la Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary. Physically, it represents the geographic focus of the new doctrine; the “plus” addition is simple to understand and can be drawn on a map. When drawn over the Americas, it goes down to South America and across to the tips of Eurasia: Europe and East Asia. The United States should endeavor to keep these marked areas free of governmental anti-Americanism.

The Monroe Doctrine called for the rest of the world to stay out of Central and South American affairs. That is currently under threat, with China increasing its influence in South America. The original doctrine would therefore be a key part of Monroe+. Likewise, the ends of Eurasia staying free of being subsumed by an anti-American bloc—at the moment the most likely candidate being the Sino-Russian bloc, though that can change as time goes on—makes it less likely that America will eventually face a Eurasia united against it, a scenario which has long been the nightmare of American strategic planners.

This doctrine—clear, simple, wedded to national interest while allowing for an idealistic coating—checks every previously mentioned necessity.

For one, it redirects attention on America’s national interest by rejecting any grand global “War on [Ideological Concept].” It does not tie the United States into any sort of world-spanning battle. It simply seeks to protect America from geographic threats and keeps its influence in key geographic areas in case more is needed—both of which should be the main goals of America’s national interest.

It is also transferrable from administration to administration. Much like the Monroe Doctrine of old, Monroe+ could guide America for the rest of the century. Absent ideological threats to the United States like communism, America should prepare to face China, which by all accounts is a traditional rising power: nationalistic, expanding its influence, and gearing up for a potential war. A doctrine like this would prepare the United States properly. Different presidents may add their own tweaks and focus on different aspects of Monroe+, but it would ultimately remain consistent. This also makes it more politically tenable; it is fairly easy to understand why these areas should be kept free of anti-Americanism, and as a result, will not require tenuous political arguments to gain public support. This straightforwardness has another added benefit: by not basing America’s foreign policy around promoting an ideology, such as democracy promotion or a “war on autocracy,” future presidents will not fall into the trap of being rightfully tarred as hypocrites for being necessary allies with autocratic regimes.

Finally, Monroe+ takes advantage of existing alliances instead of simply discarding them. The European Union (EU), which is a close ally of the United States and comprises the vast majority of NATO members, currently holds something akin to vassal-lite status. It has steadily attempted to gain more independence from the United States, but, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now buys more liquid natural gas from America than it does Russia. This presents America a key advantage: it can utilize Europe’s desire for independence while keeping EU members from straying too far. In a break with the past, the new doctrine would therefore see America urge Europe to develop its own defense infrastructure. NATO could then be transformed into a two-power bloc, composed of the United States and the EU (along with the UK and Norway). The EU could then keep an eye on one end of the Sino-Russian bloc, Russia (with the voraciously anti-Russian Eastern European states ensuring the EU never switches sides), while America finally completes the long-discussed “Pivot to Asia” to keep an eye on the other end. Not only is a more united Europe going to be less susceptible to Chinese influence—keeping that end of Eurasia free of governmental anti-Americanism—but by staying true to older alliances (while forcing them to pick up the slack), it will make it easier for America to build stronger alliances in East Asia.

The name of such a new doctrine ultimately is not important. If a President Ron DeSantis were to declare it in 2025, the “DeSantis Doctrine” would work just as well. “Monroe+” as a name is much less important than what it connotates: a return to America’s earliest foreign policy philosophy, one which served the United States well for 100 years, while at the same time updating it for twenty-first-century threats. America no longer needs to embark upon globe-spanning ideological conflicts. But at the same time, there are threats that must be dealt with. Monroe+ would get America ready to do so.

Anthony J. Constantini is writing his Ph.D. on populism and early American democracy at the University of Vienna in Austria. Previously he received an M.A. in Arms Control and Strategic Studies from St. Petersburg State University, Russia. In 2016 he was the War Room Director for the NRSC.

Image: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter Burghart/U.S. Navy Flickr.

On February 2, it was revealed by NBC News that the United States was tracking a huge Chinese balloon that traveled over the Aleutian Islands and western Canada, only to hover over 150 Minuteman III ICBM silos deployed around Malmstrom Air Force Base in central Montana for an extended period of time. The Chinese government claimed that the stratospheric balloon was a civilian airship, designed primarily for meteorological and weather research, that was blown off course. But the Pentagon disputed that explanation, saying it intentionally flew over sensitive U.S. military sites. It has since been revealed that the airship entered U.S. airspace on January 28 over Alaska and was spotted over Montana on January 31. The White House reportedly attempted to conceal this unprecedented intrusion of a Chinese military balloon into U.S. airspace from both the U.S. Congress and the public, which weren’t informed about it until it was sighted by the public days later.

This Chinese military airship was more alarming than the previous ones because it loitered over sensitive U.S. nuclear weapon sites. The Pentagon claims that, once the balloon was detected, measures were taken to prevent the balloon from transmitting any intelligence information gleaned from its proximity to the ICBM silos back to China. The Pentagon further revealed that the balloon was maneuverable and capable of changing the direction it was while moving.

Biden’s Baffling Response

Despite informing the public that the Chinese balloon did not pose a threat to Americans, the Biden administration responded by canceling Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing indefinitely. For its part, the U.S. Department of Defense scrambled F-22 fighters to intercept the balloon over Montana in case the orders were given to shoot it down with air-to-air missiles. The planes, however, were ordered to stand down. Days later, on February 4,  a U.S. F-22 fighter shot down the balloon using an air-to-air missile off the coast of South Carolina after it had circumnavigated the entire continental United States over the course of a week. The Pentagon reports it is attempting to salvage the remains of the balloon to help determine its true mission, find out what it was carrying, and determine what intelligence it may have relayed to China before it was downed. 

President Joe Biden subsequently stated that he ordered it shot down on February 1 as soon as safely possible. However, in the latest sign that the Biden administration is not serious about defending the United States of America which they have sworn to protect, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley—who infamously told his Chinese equivalent, General Li Zuocheng, that he would warn him if the United Tates were about to attack the People’s Republic of China—and General VanHerck, who serves as the commander of NORAD, reportedly advised Biden not to shoot it down until it had finished circumnavigating the continental United States. Their reported rationale was that it would pose an undue risk of civilian casualties from its debris—even when it was flying above central Montana, one of the least populated areas of the country.

This decision has to be considered a significant win for Beijing on the international stage and a missed opportunity to demonstrate America’s resolve in responding to Chinese threats against our own homeland. China's prestige received a huge boost as Biden made the decision not to shoot down a Chinese airship the size of three school buses while it was flying over the continental United States. If we had sent a U.S. airship over China, Beijing would have most assuredly shot it out of the sky long before it crossed into Chinese airspace. 

Congressional Republicans, led by Sen. Josh Hawley, are understandably calling for an immediate congressional investigation into Biden’s “baffling response” to this Chinese provocation in allowing a massive Chinese military airship to invade U.S. airspace and fly over the American homeland over the course of a one-week period. The Biden administration should have treated this Chinese airship like we would treat a Chinese nuclear bomber attempting to fly over our territory: warning Beijing to turn it around or we would destroy it. Shooting it down over Alaska would have sent a message to Beijing that the United Tates will not tolerate such potentially serious threats in our own airspace any more than they would if we did the same thing to them.

What Could Have the Balloon Done?

While it claimed the balloon did not pose a security threat and recommended Biden not to shoot it down until it was over the Atlantic Ocean, the Pentagon later revealed that the balloon was equipped with “a technology bay” with advanced sensor equipment and an estimated payload of several hundred pounds. This would provide the balloon, or a similar vehicle, with the capability to carry weapons of mass destruction. Such a huge Chinese airship would serve as a useful platform for a super Electromagnetic (EMP) weapon or high-yield nuclear weapon that could have killed tens of millions of Americans. On the less destructive side of things, the balloon could have perhaps carried some kind of jamming device that could potentially interfere with our nuclear command and control systems. The FBI previously identified such a device in Washington DC, believed to be capable of disrupting nuclear launch orders.

In addition, Beijing likely used the balloon to engage in strategic signaling: a warning to the United States not to interfere if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan were may happen later this year. If not, China would not hesitate to strike the U.S. homeland with nuclear and super EMP weapons, which could destroy our great nation.

No one can claim that this sort of threat was unforeseen. In a 2008 report, the Congressional EMP Commission warned that a comprehensive nationwide EMP attack could be conducted on the United States by means of such a stratospheric balloon. Likewise, the American Leadership & Policy Foundation indicated in a 2015 report that such a thing was possible. Paul Bedard explained in a Washington Examiner column:

High-altitude balloons, such as the one China has floated over mountain state military bases this week, are considered a key “delivery platform” for secret nuclear strikes on America’s electric grid, according to intelligence officials. The threat of balloon-launched electromagnetic pulse attacks was warned about by a congressional EMP commission and inside the military several years ago. In a 2015 report for the American Leadership & Policy Foundation, Air Force Maj. David Stuckenberg, one of the nation’s leading EMP experts, wrote extensively about the threat balloons carrying bombs pose to national security. “Using a balloon as a WMD/WME platform could provide adversaries with a pallet of altitudes and payload options with which to maximize offensive effects against the U.S.,” he wrote in the report. “There is nothing to prevent several hundred pounds of weapons material from being delivered to altitude,” he added. On Friday, he told [the Washington Examiner], “China’s recent balloon flyover of the United States is clearly a provocative and aggressive act. It was most likely a type of dry run meant to send a strategic message to the USA. We must not take this for granted.”

China came close to being in a position to pull this off. On February 3, Brigadier General Patrick S. Ryder, the Department of Defense’s press secretary, stated in an official press conference that the balloon was continuing to move eastward and fly over strategic U.S. military bases. He also revealed that it was flying over Missouri at the center of the United States, which is the optimal location to execute a super EMP attack on the U.S. homeland.

The balloon needn’t have carried an EMP weapon to have been effective either. Modern-day nuclear weapons can be easily miniaturized to weigh less than 200 pounds each. In fact, the smallest U.S. tactical nuclear weapons dating from the late 1950s weighed a mere fifty-six pounds. If armed with a nuclear weapon, such an airship could even be used to execute a decapitation strike on Washington DC, taking out America’s top political and military leadership in a single blow. Similarly, if it were armed with a biological weapon such as weaponized anthrax, the balloon could have been utilized to rain anthrax spores over the United States, affecting millions of Americans with a 90 percent kill rate. Yet another possibility is that the balloon could have been carrying a dirty radiological bomb, whose effects could be spread over a populated area.

The Fallout

All of these possibilities provide a compelling rationale for Biden to have ordered the airship shot down as soon as it began flying over the Aleutian islands on January 28, rather than one week later after it had crossed the entire country.

Ironically, the United States and Canada conducted Operation Noble Defender on Jan 15 through 31 to demonstrate the joint abilities of the U.S. and Canadian Air forces to defend our joint airspace. The Chinese balloon crossed over western Canada and Alaska during the last four days of this exercise, effectively highlighting major vulnerabilities in our air defense systems as well as the unwillingness of U.S. political and military leaders to act.

Biden’s failure to act to defend U.S. airspace from what could have potentially been an existential threat is in furtherance of his previous record of seemingly ignoring existential threats and pretending they don’t exist.  Last year, Russia placed its strategic nuclear arsenal on the highest alert level since the end of the Cold War and operationally deployed its multi-warhead Yars road-mobile missiles. Biden did not even bother to increase our nuclear readiness above DEFCON 5, which is our lowest state of readiness. His decision to leave the U.S. nuclear arsenal essentially vulnerable to a Russian nuclear surprise attack stood in marked contrast to previous presidents of both major political parties, who increased our nuclear alert statuses with Russia to show Moscow we were serious about defending America.

As if to add insult to injury, during a press conference held on February 6, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre stated that the National Security Council had sent out a TikTok to the press corps to explain why they waited seven days to shoot down the Chinese military spy airship. In other words, Biden’s national security council is using a known Chinese surveillance and spy tool to explain why the administration failed to shoot down a Chinese surveillance/spy airship until after it had completed its mission and collected seven days’ worth of sensitive surveillance data.

If anyone had doubts as to whether the Biden administration was at all concerned about U.S. national security in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle, its Ukraine war policy provoking an unnecessary, and likely nuclear, war with Russia, and the recent classified document scandal, then the administration’s decision to give a Chinese nuclear-capable weapon system a free pass across the entire country should dispel them.

A Failure of Leadership

The failure to defend U.S. airspace from a Chinese airship—which had the capability to carry weapons of mass destruction that could kill millions of Americans—signals that the United States would be unlikely to respond militarily to Chinese aggression against Taiwan. After all, if Biden won’t even act to defend our country, why would our nuclear-armed adversaries believe he would be willing to fight a direct war against them?

Biden’s decision also begs the question of how he would respond if the PRC revealed that the airship was, in fact, carrying a high-yield nuclear weapon or super EMP weapon, and threatened to detonate it if the United States attempted to shoot it down. One can only wonder how the president might respond to a potential Chinese blackmail attempt via nuclear-armed balloon; an effort to strong-arm the White House into accepting its demands, up to and including forcing America to take all three legs of its strategic nuclear triad off alert status—in effect destroying the credibility of our strategic nuclear deterrent and our ability to deter future Chinese attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Ultimately, I believe that the most important, game-changing intelligence this Chinese surveillance balloon will end up gathering is testing whether Biden would shoot down a Chinese nuclear-capable weapons platform while it was flying over our country. Sadly, Biden has failed this crucial test of presidential leadership, and in so doing severely damaged America’s credibility.

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas from 2000–2003. He holds M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, and is a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s book Blackout Warfare: Attacking The U.S. Electric Power Grid A Revolution In Military Affairs. He also serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Image: Shutterstock.

Chaque fois qu'on cherche à interpréter les motivations des djihadistes, le même affrontement semble monopoliser la scène : radicalisation religieuse liée à l'islam ou bien radicalisation politique qui prend l'islam pour prétexte ? Mais rares sont les spécialistes qui imaginent encore qu'une cause (...) / France, Islam, Jeunes, Religion, Société, Terrorisme, Fondamentalisme, Banlieue - 2017/12

Deciphering the way Moscow handles its ultimate weapon.

How months of protest forged an even more intransigent regime.

The danger of open warfare involving Israel and Iran is increasing. One recent omen was a drone attack, which nearly all observers attributed to Israel, on a military facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan. Israel has been clandestinely conducting lethal offensive operations in Iran for years, but the current increased risk of wider conflict is related to both countries’ politics; extreme and undemocratic features have become especially salient in recent months. The situation could be considered the obverse of democratic peace theory, according to which democracies do not wage war against each other.

Another recent omen is an uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence, as punctuated by an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank, leading to the death of ten Palestinians, including a sixty-one-year-old grandmother. Israeli violence against Palestinians unsurprisingly begets Palestinian attempts at retribution, as it did in this case. The spiral of violence between Israelis and Palestinians is spiraling upward. Last year, more than 150 Palestinians died in violent operations by Israeli forces, with about one-fifth that number of Israelis dying from Palestinian violence. Last month, Israelis killed thirty-five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, making January the deadliest such month in more than a decade.

The connection between Israeli-Palestinian violence and the risk of Israeli-Iranian escalation is twofold. One connection is the perennial Israeli attempt to displace blame and international attention from anything involving Israel by attributing all instability in the Middle East to Iran. This is a major reason for Israel’s stoking of tension and confrontation with Iran, and its rejection and undermining of diplomacy aimed at reducing tensions with Iran. To the extent that the upsurge in bloodshed among Palestinians attracts additional unwanted international attention to the occupation of the West Bank, the Israeli motivation for stoking even more tension with Iran will be all the stronger.

The other connection is that Israel can legitimately point to Iranian support to Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, although that support is hardly what drives the resistance. Profiling of Palestinian suicide bombers by Israel’s own security forces has found that the common thread among those who resorted to that extreme form of violent resistance was not religion or any other demographic characteristic, much less any foreign support to a resistance group, but instead that each of the bombers had had someone close to them—a friend or family member—killed by Israel. Nonetheless, Israel will use the Iranian link to the Palestinian groups as a rationale for operations such as the Isfahan attack even though Iran is perpetrating no comparable clandestine attacks inside Israel.

The coming to power of the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history amplifies the effects of each of these connections. That extremism, along with various measures that Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government has in train such as an emasculation of the judiciary, has led to increased questioning of Israel’s direction by some of its most prominent traditional supporters, including in the United States. The increased need to divert international and especially American attention from that extremism and to shore up foreign support increases the motivation for Netanyahu to keep returning the subject to Iran and to keep promoting hostility toward Iran—just as he did in his recent joint press conference with U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken.

The far-right composition of Netanyahu’s government also is likely to lead to increased Israeli-Palestinian violence, as a matter both of Israeli provocations and of dashing any Palestinian hopes. One sample of possible provocations was a walk atop what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount by Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who says he intends to do more of the same. It is worth remembering that a similar stroll on that holy site by another prominent Israeli politician, Ariel Sharon, triggered what became known as the Second Intifada, a multi-year wave of violence in which an estimated 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis died.

The dashing of Palestinian hopes involves the determination of this Israeli government, more blatantly and consistently than any other, to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu—the closest thing to a moderating influence in this government of extremists—has said as much recently, notwithstanding his earlier lip service to the possibility of a Palestinian state. Bereft of hope for an end to the occupation and apartheid, some Palestinians will see nothing to lose through violent resistance.

On top of this is the government’s encouragement of unofficial violence by Jews against Arabs, especially as perpetrated by West Bank settlers. Netanyahu announced an easing of licensing requirements for owning a firearm, stating that his goal was the arming of “thousands” of Israeli citizens. A foretaste of what West Bank settlers, feeling more empowered than ever with the advent of the far-right government, are likely to do came late last month when settlers made almost 150 attacks against Palestinian residents and their property in a single day.

Whatever the exact nature of the Israeli-Palestinian violence, any upsurge of it plays into the Israeli-Iranian confrontation in the aforementioned ways.

The Iranian end of that confrontation displays some parallel motivations, with a regime that oppresses part of its subject population possibly seeing reasons to heat up external conflict. Especially since the beginning of the current wave of popular protests in Iran, triggered by the death last year of a Kurdish-Iranian woman in official custody, the Tehran regime has shown that it has lost the support of much of its population but has not lost its determination to use whatever means necessary to stay in power. The fall of this regime is not in the cards, but additional violence certainly is.

Most of the officially administered violence is internal to Iran. So far, violence beyond Iran’s borders has been aimed at exiled dissidents—a return to behavior that the Islamic Republic exhibited during its early years. But it is easy to picture Iranian hardliners, beleaguered by the domestic protests, seeing rally-round-the-flag value in an escalated confrontation with Israel. In any event, Iranian leaders will try to respond to Israeli violence against Iran, which is what nearly all past Iranian attempts to hit Israeli targets have been.

Iranian leaders have been given little or no incentive to refrain from any such escalation, considering the sanctions and opprobrium to which their country already is subject. With the Biden administration having continued its predecessor’s failed “maximum pressure” policy toward Iran, Iranian decisionmakers—much like the hopeless Palestinians seeing no end to the Israeli occupation—see themselves as having little or nothing to lose by trying something extraterritorial and violent.

The current situation with Israel and Iran illustrates how hardliners in two adversarial countries can play off each other and in effect become each other’s best allies, while jointly becoming the enemies of peace and stability.

The risk of the United States being dragged into this dangerous situation is significant. Washington has allowed itself to be hitched militarily to an Israeli government that would be happy for the United States to be in the front rank of a war against Iran. The Iranian regime will see little daylight between the United States and Israel. Furthermore, Iran has not closed the books on the Trump administration’s assassination three years ago of one of the most prominent Iranian political and military figures, Qasem Soleimani.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

Image: saeediex / Shutterstock.com

The recent flurry of attacks on Chinese nationals in Afghanistan has raised concerns inside Beijing’s foreign policy circles. Beijing has a self-made reputation for operating on an astute business model. While Beijing is somewhat risk-averse, it does not let values and norms impede its economic interests. Its conduct and policies toward Taliban-ruled Afghanistan mirror this approach. So far, despite facing some obstacles, China has remained committed to cementing its presence in the country to advance its strategic and economic objectives. The future, however, doesn’t look very promising for Beijing.    

Months before the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021, Beijing appeared to have thrown its dice in favor of the insurgents. In July 2021, China hosted a Taliban delegation, which reportedly assured Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi that it would not allow any terrorist group, especially the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), to carry out anti-China activities on Afghan soil. The Taliban did act on their promise, shifting ETIM forces away from the Afghanistan-China border and restricting their activities.  

There are two core aspects to Beijing’s interest in Afghanistan: establishing security in its western frontier by controlling Uyghur separatism and protecting Belt and Road projects in Central Asia and Pakistan. Afghanistan has emerged as a lynchpin for both. Beijing’s twin strategies are now playing out.

First, China has positioned itself as the Taliban’s savior, a true friend that it can rely on when the entire international community has not only washed its hands of Afghanistan but also remained selectively opposed to the Taliban’s policies. While Beijing has yet to give formal political recognition to the Taliban, it operates an embassy in Kabul with a designated ambassador. Moreover, China has allowed a Taliban representative to occupy the Afghan embassy in Beijing. China’s foreign minister has been to Kabul, as have various official delegations. China also hosted the Taliban foreign minister in a meeting of foreign ministers of regional countries in March 2022.

Second, in a continuation of its policy during the previous republican government of focusing on economic investment in Afghanistan, China has shown a willingness to pump money into the country’s mining and energy sectors and lend the expertise necessary to rebuild the country. For the cash-strapped Taliban, this has been a beacon of light. The Islamic Emirate has embraced the prospect of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) being extended into Afghanistan, although it is unlikely due to virulent local opposition in Balochistan. On January 5, a Chinese company signed a deal worth over $500 million with the Islamic Emirate to enable oil extraction in the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan, which contains an estimated 87 million barrels worth of crude oil. The deal-signing ceremony took place in the presence of Chinese envoy to Afghanistan Wang Yu and high-ranking Taliban officials, including Abdul Ghani Baradar, the acting deputy prime minister for economic affairs. The agreement is the Islamic Emirate’s first major energy investment contract. Furthermore, China would also like to restart extraction operations at the Mes Aynak copper mine, the contract for which had been awarded in 2008.    

Afghanistan, it appears, has turned into a favorable hunting ground for China, with its natural resources up for grabs. Chinese nationals are believed to be the biggest group of foreign investors in the country. Not surprisingly, Beijing has had a muted reaction to the Taliban’s obscurantist policies on the rights of women and minorities, and its early statements in favor of an inclusive government have fallen silent.

However, China’s somewhat smooth sailing in Afghanistan has been disrupted by the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province (ISIS-K). On December 12, the group carried out a terrorist attack on a Kabul hotel usually occupied by Chinese businessmen. In September, ISIS-K, through its propaganda magazine, vowed to oppose Chinese “imperialism” in Afghanistan. ISIS-K, whose violent activities have challenged the Taliban’s claim to power over Afghanistan, clearly seeks to expand its influence in Central Asia and attract Uyghur Muslim militants. The group is believed to have expanded into all of Afghanistan’s provinces of Afghanistan, emerging as the Taliban’s principal adversary. This, in turn, poses a serious challenge to Beijing’s aims. Indeed, China now reportedly plans to arm the Taliban with surveillance drones and sophisticated weapons. Beijing has also urged the Islamic Emirate to keep Chinese investors safe.       

As China gets deeply involved in an economically fragile Afghanistan, it is bound to face enormous security challenges that will limit its ambitions. China’s extractive economic model—neglecting the development of infrastructure, governance, and transportation networks—is destined to fail. As the region becomes increasingly radicalized, there will almost certainly be a ripple effect on China’s Uyghur population. ISIS-K’s growing presence in Afghanistan could make China’s interests in the region more vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, the emerging competition among regional powers invites a new “Great Game” in Afghanistan.

Dr. Shanthie Mariet D'Souza is the Founder and President of Mantraya, a Visiting Faculty at the Naval War College in Goa, India, and a Non-resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute. She has conducted field research in Afghanistan for more than a decade. She can be reached at shanthie.dsouza@mantraya.org or on Twitter @shanmariet.

Image: Roshan Salih/Shutterstock.com.

American officials continue to harangue Middle East leaders, suggesting that economic, trade, and investment ties with China’s technology companies are risking their security ties with the United States. They are being shrugged off.

America’s fundamental challenge is Middle East countries don’t want to choose between the United States or China.  They believe that a bifurcation is possible: engage with China on commercial matters and simultaneously with the US on traditional national security challenges. Emirati senior Diplomatic Advisor Anwar Gargash said recently that “…economic ties can exist separately from [security and political] concerns.”

For Washington, economic security is national security. There is not and cannot be a meaningful distinction. At the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain last November, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl warned that China “pursues ties based solely on its narrow, transactional, commercial, and geopolitical interests, period.”

It’s not that Middle East actors see Beijing as a benign power, offering win-win cooperation and no-strings-attached economic benefits. There’s a long history of extra-regional powers in the Middle East and most know an opportunistic outsider when they see one. But they don’t see China as a threat, or at least not in the same way Washington does.

China is their largest trade partner, a great power with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and a technological giant that has transformed itself from third world to first in a single generation. After several years of warnings from the Trump and Biden administrations, and the case for disengagement with China still no better defined, officials in the region are simply tuning out the United States on the issue.

The US won’t stop pressing these countries over their ties to China, of course. American politics demand it. Letting up would also risk implying that U.S. concerns have diminished. But simply continuing to pressure MENA states is not going to be enough to change MENA countries’ views, behavior, or relationships with China.

Washington needs a new strategy.

The binary construct in which the US is Arab states’ security partner and China is the economic one ignores the substantial roles that US allies and partners play as trade, investment, and contracting partners throughout the Middle East.

The UAE, for example, China is its top trade partner, but India is a close second with Japan third, followed by the United States. Importantly, India and Japan also have problems with China. For Saudi Arabia, China is its biggest export destination; but the United States, UAE, Germany, and India round out the top five.

A smarter approach would be for the US to end the bilateral strategic competition narrative and instead leverage its networks of allies and partners to quickly develop more multilateral coalitions—like the India, Israel, UAE, U.S. grouping (I2U2). This would address the economic and developmental requirements that make China an attractive partner to Middle East countries.

Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India have all experienced the sharp end of China’s economic statecraft and the raft of problems associated with an embrace of Chinese technology.

Canberra can help cut further into China’s lead on critical minerals. There should be a formalized agreement with Seoul and Taipei as global, non-U.S. alternatives on semiconductors, given Samsung, SK Hynix, and TSMC’s leadership in the field. Tokyo is already leading on 6G and could be brought into Saudi-US agreements for joint cooperation on the topic. And India can be even more of an alternative for production, and consumption, given its population rivals that of China’s.

The knock against the United States is that it makes strident demands not to work with China without offering reasonable alternatives. Fair or not, to have any chance of diminishing the relationship between MENA states and China, viable, alternative markets are the key and US allies can provide them.

These new constructs would not mean the US is giving up its own efforts in these sectors; it would be recognition that it can’t go it alone. Collaboration with allies is the only way to provide Middle East partners sufficient investment and trade alternatives to China in these sectors, while also protecting US national security concerns.

The message from Washington isn’t resonating with Middle East allies right now; it’s time to better partner with U.S. allies and let them do some of the talking. 

Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the China-MENA Podcast. He is also an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a senior fellow in the Geoeconomics Center at the Atlantic Council. Previously, he was the deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and oversaw the U.S. intelligence community’s efforts on foreign investment.

The views expressed in this publication are the author’s and do not imply endorsement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or any U.S. Government department/agency.

Image: Flickr/State Department.

Over the past century, Central Europe’s political order has seen a pattern of ideological German-Russian love-hate relations. The lands between the two powers, from the Balkans to the Baltics, were alternately controlled by one or the other, usually with shared responsibility. Each time they failed to reach an agreement on power sharing, a political vacuum formed, and world wars broke out. The First World War involved the Balkan vacuum, followed by a Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) vacuum which led to World War II. The Cold War was unleashed when Soviet influence in the region exceeded the acceptable limits of earlier consensuses, while the current war, Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, is clearly the result of the Ukrainian vacuum.

Today we have an unprecedented situation in Europe. With the Russian-German paradigm crumbling for the first time since World War II, the two powers have lost their former political prowess in the region. Russia’s economic influence in Europe has collapsed, while Germany’s unique growth model has dramatically diminished, as has its role as the European Union's main moral authority.

This evolving geopolitical climate is a unique opportunity for the CEE states to create a new, responsible European economic security architecture. But this Eurasian political vacuum also presents an existential threat to the region if it is ultimately filled by a different sort of influence: that of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Hand of the CCP

Even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the CCP sought influence in the region through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, or 17+1 bloc. However, Western sanctions on Russia forced Moscow to become dependent on Beijing for exports of dual-use products and materials for use by Russia’s military, including microchips, aluminum oxide, and other raw materials, leading to the Baltic states ending cooperation with Beijing. The future of the Cooperation between China and CEE countries platform has remained uncertain since.

Even without BRI or other formal China/CEE initiatives, close economic ties between Beijing and Central and Eastern Europe present risks to the region, including the export of the CCP’s mercantilist-communist economic model and techno-authoritarianism. China maintains an ability to coerce its CEE trading partners through an asymmetric economic dependence the region continues to have on Chinese imports. Trade is not equitably reciprocated, due to China securing supply chains in its favor and ending its reliance on high-value foreign imports through the CCP’s “dual circulation” economic model.

Beijing has further exploited this economic dependence through its support of the Trans-Asian railway to Poland and the Czech Republic, which ostensibly offers China an attractive, fast-growing trade route and hub for the region. For China, this railway is much more than about trade, however. This 9,500-kilometer route is a potential alternative to Indo-Pacific trade routes. In the event of hostilities in the Taiwan Strait, the route may be China’s only way to quickly export goods to the West. By building trade dependencies in the region and penetrating CEE markets considered particularly friendly to the United States, China can create new strategic advantages and drive wedges in Western partnerships.

As such, China’s interest in expanding the historic trade route and developing cooperation in CEE is not surprising. Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil in the region, CCP influence, along with Russo-Ukrainian and tensions surrounding Taiwan, may be one of the more serious challenges for the West today.

Enter the Three Seas

The Three Seas Initiative (TSI), an economic and infrastructure development forum consisting of twelve European Union countries in the CEE between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic seas, can help counter autocratic threats from both Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Through regional security structures, military cooperation, and joint infrastructure initiatives, TSI can help the region secure supply chains, realize energy security, and gain independence from PRC investment, as well as develop a new regional security architecture to respond to future geopolitical challenges.

Investment in the CEE is particularly needed as TSI member governments continue to face economic pressures due to inflation, the Russo-Ukraine War, and a slow recovery from coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. Regional governments cannot be expected to finance regional infrastructure development, nor can G7 countries like the United States or the United Kingdom be relied upon for investment when their priority is funding Ukraine’s military aid.

Once a political solution is reached, ending hostilities between Moscow and Kyiv, priority will shift from aiding Ukraine militarily to assisting the country’s reconstruction. The Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund (TSIIF), which helps finance transportation, energy, and digital infrastructure projects, should play a significant role in not only re-building Ukraine, but also ensuring the entire CEE region’s economy remains insusceptible to leverage from Russia, China, or other such actors. The TSIIF should seek investments from private equity, pension funds seeking to diversify investments from uncertain equity markets, and wealthy Indo-Pacific partners which have not been impacted by the regional volatility from the war and which have significant foreign currency reserves. The TSI also should work with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to further expand the Blue Dot Network (BDN) into CEE, and help attract more private investment through the certification of infrastructure projects by BDN members America, Australia, and Japan.

Today, most Western countries aiding Ukraine do so through border crossings in Poland or Romania, but most activities are carried out independently by each individual country. NATO and the European Union are, of course, engaged in providing support to Ukraine, but even they do not undertake broad-based coordination. By using the TSI to coordinate not only logistics but to partner on Ukraine’s transformation into a prosperous Western democracy, CEE can build a broad architecture resistant to further CCP infiltration in the region.

Tomasz Wróblewski is the chief executive officer of the Warsaw Enterprise Institute.

Darren Spinck is an associate research fellow with the Henry Jackson Society.

Image: Tomasz Makowski/Shutterstock.com.

Le procès de l'ancien président ivoirien Laurent Gbagbo devait sceller le triomphe du droit international sur la violence politique. Mais, révélant les carences d'une instruction à charge, les audiences mettent en lumière les responsabilités françaises dans le conflit et la puissance du réseau du (...) / Afrique, Côte d'Ivoire, France, Droit international, Justice, Afrique de l'Ouest, Justice internationale - 2017/12

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $200 million grant to electric vehicle battery manufacturer Microvast as part of its effort to promote green energy. But there’s a problem.

Ostensibly headquartered in Texas, Microvast actually manufactures most of its products and does the bulk of its business in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Houston office exists mainly to facilitate the receipt of “green energy” government subsidies.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is willing to go along with this poorly disguised ruse. The myopic pursuit of cheap renewable energy sources is clearly more important to the administration than preventing American taxpayer dollars from going to the PRC, which will pocket them while simultaneously cornering an energy sector on which the United States may well become dependent, as Microvast may well be just the tip of this iceberg.

Biden’s Energy Department maintains that Microvast is really an American company and that the grants will help disentangle the company from Chinese supply chains and encourage the development of new technologies in the United States. But a simple Google search reveals that in 2017, chinabuses.org referred to Microvast as “the leading battery manufacturer in China.”

When Microvast was formed in 2006, a subsidiary entity (Microvast Power Systems) was simultaneously incorporated in Huzhou, China. Wu Yang, Microvast’s chairman and CEO, was previously CEO of the Chinese water purification entity OMEX in Shanghai. More than two-thirds of the company’s revenue is generated in China, where more than 80 percent of its assets are located. Microvast’s own SEC filings lay out the risk to its manufacturing assets in China. In addition, any company with such significant Chinese exposure is subject to Beijing’s policies that mandate technology transfers to the state.

Surely, the Biden administration knows Microvast is a PRC front. But it appears to consider it imperative to transition American energy to renewables and recognizes that domestically produced components are too expensive to be practical. The administration thus views the long-term risks of doing business with companies like Microvast as acceptable collateral damage.

Not everyone agrees. The Microvast grant (among others) has rightly attracted Congressional attention, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm’s upcoming annual budget testimony will be an excellent opportunity to question her on the topic. But, clearly, Congress must do more than simply ask questions.

Microvast received the grant under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. While the law urges the Energy Department to focus on actual U.S. companies, Congress needs to make the prohibition against giving grants to Chinese entities explicit. Doing so should be a top priority for the 118th Congress.

If companies like Microvast wish to receive U.S. government contracts and subsidies, they should divest Chinese entanglements and submit a clean bill of health to the Energy Department before they receive the funding. The Biden administration should not be in the business of trying to tempt the company away from China with handouts, no matter how desperately it desires cheap lithium batteries. If the Department of Energy cannot do this on its own initiative, as appears to be the case, Congress should require it to certify that no recipients of grants or subsidies have any ties to the PRC.

This needs to happen now because Microvast is hardly an isolated case. Vast sums authorized under both the infrastructure package and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act continue to flow through the Energy Department and other federal agencies. Microvast may well be just a minor actor in a massive Chinese operation to both subvert these funds and control the renewable energy sources the Biden administration is determined to impose on the United States, in effect transforming America from a global energy superpower into a supplicant to the PRC.

Indeed, the whole premise that the nation must switch over to less reliable renewable energy (and become more dependent on China) to combat climate change should now be called into question. Grandholm has announced that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has made a material breakthrough on nuclear fusion technology. This advancement opens up the possibility of a new energy source that creates no emissions or toxic waste and requires a much smaller footprint than fossil fuels.

Bringing fusion to the scale necessary for it to be a significant clean energy source will take decades. But we would do far better to focus on developing this technology in conjunction with our allies, especially the United Kingdom, while we fuel our immediate future with our own increasingly clean fossil fuels and existing nuclear fission technology. Such a strategy could continue to lower emissions, allow us to retain energy reliability, and avoid leaving our energy security at the mercy of the PRC and its subsidiaries, starting with Microvast.

Victoria Coates is a senior research fellow specializing in national security and international affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

Image: Flickr/White House.

The Swiss writer Max Fritsch called his play Biedermann and the Fire Raisers (1958) “a didactic play without a lesson.” The main character, Gottlieb Biedermann, is an upright citizen and hair tonic merchant. Two ill-intentioned vagrants wheedle their way into his home, store gasoline in the attic and Biedermann even provides them with the matches to burn the house down. When confronted with solid evidence of the arsonists’ intentions, Gottlieb Biedermann finds every excuse not to take action. “All I want is some peace and quiet, not more.” He argues, “If I report those two guys to the police, I’ll make them my enemies. What good will that do me? On the other hand, if I go up there and invite them to dinner, then we’ll be friends.”

On an eerily similar note, the German weekly magazine, Stern, has accused Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of being an “arsonist” and stirring up trouble not only in Turkey but also in Syria and Germany in an attempt to stay in power. The United States is faced with a dilemma similar to Biedermann’s with regard to Turkey and a planned $20 billion arms package, including forty F-16 fighter jets and seventy-nine upgrade kits. On the one hand, the United States needs to keep on good terms with Turkey because of its NATO membership and key strategic position in the Middle East. On the other, how far is it prepared to tolerate Turkey’s growing human rights abuses and incendiary behavior in the neighborhood?

In the recent hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on countering Russian aggression in Ukraine, Senator Jeanne Shaheen raised the issue of Turkey’s continued failure to ratify Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession agreement. She explained that she and a number of her colleagues were opposed to the F-16 deal unless Turkey ratified the agreement. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland agreed Congress was more likely to look favorably on the deal after ratification.

What Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlet Cavusoglu has stated are two separate issues seems to have degenerated into a quid pro quo deal. After the Senate hearing, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel denied this was the case. In addition, he emphasized the Biden administration’s support for Turkey as an important NATO ally in providing what Victoria Nuland called “security enhancements.”

However, Jeanne Shaheen and twenty-six other senators confirmed the transactional nature of the deal by informing President Joe Biden they are not prepared to greenlight the sale until Turkey agrees to Sweden and Finland’s accession.

Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil, who is also a Turkey correspondent for Defense News, has in a trenchant analysis undermined the illusion that Turkey under Erdogan is a dependable NATO ally in the struggle against Russia. On the contrary, Bekdil concludes: “The Erdoğan-Putin bond has two main pillars. One is pragmatism: They both strategically, politically, and economically benefit. The other is ideological: They both hate the West.”

Clifford Smith from the Middle East Forum believes Erdogan’s reluctance to endorse Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership is a refusal to “stay bribed,” but the truth lies elsewhere. Senator Shaheen’s assessment that domestic politics play a major role is correct, but a further dimension has been added after ta Koran burning stunt in Stockholm.

When Turkey invaded and occupied the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwestern Syria in 2018, Erdogan had hit upon a surefire winner, as nearly 90 percent of Turkey’s citizens supported the incursion. Carnegie Europe’s Francesco Sicardi has, in a study of how Syria changed Turkey’s foreign policy, shown how four military operations in Syria have improved Erdogan’s approval ratings.

Russian economist Sergei Gurlev has written of a similar pattern in Putin’s Russia. When Russia’s GDP growth slowed to almost zero and Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings dropped. According to Gurlev, Putin decided to address an economic problem with a non-economic solution, the annexation of Crimea, which boosted his popularity.

For this reason, Erdogan is seeking Russia’s permission for a new cross-border operation against the U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria. He has also signaled a rapprochement with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Likewise, Erdogan’s initial objection to Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership was that they housed terrorist organizations, which was quickly elevated by his foreign policy advisor and spokesperson, Ibrahim Kalin, to “a matter of national security” for Turkey.

Now, Erdogan has found a new card to play, the religious card, which is guaranteed to have popular appeal. As a young man, Erdogan was president of the Istanbul youth group of the National Salvation Party, founded by Necmettin Erbakan, the father of political Islam in Turkey, which was closed in the 1980 military coup.

When Erbakan later opened the Welfare Party (RP), which became the Turkish parliament’s largest, Erdogan was RP’s mayor of Istanbul, where he famously declared in 1997, “Democracy is not our aim. It is the vehicle.”

The following year the RP was dissolved by the Constitutional Court for being a “centre of activities contrary to the principles of secularism.” Erdogan was also sent to prison for four months “for using religion to incite hatred” after quoting a nationalist poem from 1912 (“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers”).

Erdogan has made it clear to Sweden, “If you do not show respect to the religious beliefs of the Republic of Türkiye or Muslims, you will not receive any support for NATO [membership] from us.” Consequently, Finland may have to go it alone if Turkey blocks Sweden’s accession.

The outrage provoked by the incident in Stockholm has caused the U.S. government to issue a travel warning about possible retaliatory attacks by terrorists in Turkey. In return, the Turkish foreign ministry has warned its citizens against possible Islamophobic, xenophobic, and racist attacks in the United States and Europe.

In Max Fritsch’s play there is a Greek chorus of firemen who warn: “Wise is man and able to ward off most perils if, sharp of mind and alert, he heeds signs of coming disaster in time.”

Robert Ellis is an international advisor at the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens.

Image: Drop of Light/Shutterstock.

Se proclamant de gauche tout en cultivant un nationalisme albanais exacerbé, jugé hostile par les Serbes, le mouvement Vetëvendosje a réussi une percée aux législatives de juin dernier et dirige les deux plus grandes villes du Kosovo depuis les municipales de la mi-novembre. / Albanie, Balkans, (...) / Albanie, Balkans, Kosovo, Élections, Identité culturelle, Minorité nationale, Droits des minorités, Parti politique, Politique, Serbie, Europe centrale - 2017/12

Recently, among Central Asian countries, it has become a trend to create a “new Stan” after the countries’ so-called founding fathers. For instance, before starting his second term in 2021, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan announced his “New Uzbekistan Strategy” to considerably change the regime and political structure of the country after the first president of the country, Islam Karimov. The administration of Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev adopted a similar approach in 2022. In response to political unrest that took place in January of that year, Tokayev proposed a new set of full-scale reforms in the country. In his address to the nation on March 16, he stressed that it is not the following “abstract ideas” but a vision to transform the country into a “New Kazakhstan.” Are these reforms capable of creating new versions of these countries? If the answer is yes, how do these leaders transform their visions into reality?

Upon close examination of these proposed reforms, it could be argued that they represent an approach to modernizing society and state primarily derived from the early Russian economic policy of Russian president Vladimir Putin, in which Moscow focused on the simplification of opening up businesses, tax reforms, reduced government intervention in markets, etc. However, the true genesis of these reform packages is traced back to the Washington Consensus policy prescriptions developed by the IMF, World Bank, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury following the end of the Cold War. By modifying certain aspects of these prescriptions, the current economic reforms of both countries are consistent with the SLIP (Stabilization, Liberalization, Institution Building, and Privatization) Agenda reform packages.

Kazakhstan’s model closely mirrors that of Uzbekistan, with an emphasis on achieving economic growth through inflows of foreign capital and developing small and medium-sized businesses in the country, while also focusing on improving living conditions. In other words, the intention is to create an economy that works for people and a government that is “fair” and “just.” However, this may appear to be an ambitious goal for Kazakhstan, as it is not the first reform effort by Tokayev. A “New Kazakhstan” is a practical response to previous mismanagement of governmental affairs and the unsettled socio-economic environment of the country; Tokayev understands the realities of his country after “Bloody January.” Symbolically, a referendum and constitutional amendments signify that he is determined in his vision for transformation.

Who Follows What? Reform Packages of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan

Both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan possess nearly identical institutional and economic models and have passed similar reform efforts addressing the judiciary, state government, human rights, and business development, according to Aziza Umarova, a Research Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

In his first year as president, Mirziyoyev proclaimed his state program for 2017, “A Year of Dialogue with People and Human Interests,” which would involve citizens in policymaking by hearing their voices on pressing issues of the country. By the same token, as soon as he took office, Tokayev established the National Council of Public Trust and proposed a model of a “hearing state.” Each initiative would play an intermediary role between the government and society by promoting dialogue among the public, political parties, and civil society.

But the idea of building a “new” nation began in 2021, when Mirziyoyev kicked off his presidential campaign with the notion of establishing “New Uzbekistan.” Soon after winning his second term, he introduced the “Development Strategy of New Uzbekistan for 2022–2026.” This five-year program is a continuation of his first presidential program, the Strategy of Actions for 2017-–2021. As for Tokayev and Kazakhstan, in his address to the nation, he outlined five areas of reforms for “New” Kazakhstan: economic policy, the development of the real estate sector, strategic investment in the country’s future, resetting public administration, and improving law and order.

After carefully Tokayev’s proposals, it is evident that it takes significant attributes from the “Development Strategy” and “Strategy of Actions for Uzbekistan” developed by Mirziyoyev. This is not surprising, as both countries’ economic development model heavily depends on fossil fuel energy resources, agriculture, foreign direct investment, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the digitalization of the economy. 

Kazakhstan’s Economic Reforms: To What Extent Does It Differ?

Kazakhstan’s new economic reforms are the first steps to modernizing the country’s economy by relying on the instruments of a free market, including antimonopoly policies, comprehensive tax reforms, and supporting businesses by creating favorable conditions. Tokayev aims to build an economy in which responsibilities are shared between businesses and government to address complex social challenges. Businesses, in turn, will benefit from these reforms, such as via legislative change in entrepreneurial and business activities and elimination of administrative burdens. Through this process, the government intends to involve businesses in social infrastructure, building facilities to reduce excessive shortages. It is also clear that the new economic policy functions on the basis of market mechanisms by adding a number of social elements, such as honest taxation, and invoking social responsibility. To add to this, a “Council of Domestic Entrepreneurs” will be founded to support socio-economic reforms. Tokayev himself promoted the three principal elements of the new economic policy: the inviolability of private property, investment climate, and fair competition.

Any economic reform in a market economy requires legal and institutional support and, more importantly, the existence of political transparency and a stable political system in a country. The government should take into consideration institution-building and legal reforms to increase its credibility. In the early 1990s, similar reforms were introduced to reduce public sector engagement in the economy. However, there are a plethora of quasi-public institutions in Kazakhstan—about 6,500 organizations are operating in this sector. Being cognizant of these problems, the country’s prime minister asserted an urgent need to reform the legal frameworks surrounding taxation, budget, and business management. Support of domestic businesses requires a vast amount of credit resources, which is currently a problem. Reforms in the banking system are necessary to finance small and medium-sized enterprises, though most banks in the country have accumulated excess liquidity over the past years. Unfortunately, this excess amount has not been effectively injected into the economy—it instead actually suffers from about $42 billion in underfunding for small and medium businesses. To attract foreign funds, political stability will be necessary; already European experts have stressed the need to ensure stability in the country after last January’s events in order to rebuild investors’ trust and propagate the realization of these reforms.

The most notable aspect of these reforms is the pivotal role of trade. Step by step, the country’s new economic policy tries to modernize the trade policy through collaborative work with foreign countries like China, India, the United Arab Emirates, and so on via appointing special advisors on trade from those countries.  Certain features of these policies, such as liberalization and continuation of the privatization process, could be completed quickly. However, both countries have to overcome their classical conundrum—“moving from exhortation to implementation” by providing a solid promotion for the effective functioning of market institutions. Once in 2019, Tokayev stated he would not allow the recurrence of unfortunate events like the massive arms depot blast in Arys. Unfortunately, it was followed by a second military warehouse explosion in Taraz (2021) and Dungan-Kazakh ethnic clashes (2020), not to mention Bloody January last year.

Recommendations

Given the similar growth models of both countries, Kazakhstan should strengthen its socio-economic and political relations with Uzbekistan in the future in order to avoid repeating the mistakes made by its “twin.” For instance, due to the dramatic increase in lending in Uzbekistan since 2016, the banking sector of the Uzbek economy has been affected by excessive amounts of non-performing loans, and the impact of lending growth has risked asset-quality trends in the banking sector. Additionally, through comprehensive economic reforms implemented by the Uzbek government, the country has managed to develop its economy, with an average annual growth of 5.2 percent between 2016 and 2021, while Kazakhstan only has half of that, standing at 2.6 percent. Having nearly similar socio-economic problems, the Uzbek economic growth model under Mirziyoyev could improve by adopting the best practices of its neighbor.

Furthermore, due to geographical proximity, trade and economic interaction would mutually benefit both countries—strengthening cooperation in energy, logistics, and environmental protection. More importantly, there should be no competition between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but rather cooperation for growth and development, and supporting each other in solving regional conflicts and “new age” issues such as environment, cybercrime, etc. Considering their mutual energy sector dependence on Russia, both states should bring about structural reform in their energy supply management and green energy sources through bilateral cooperation. Recently, both countries took down Moscow’s offer of the foundation of a trilateral gas union, which will benefit them in the long run as it significantly reduces Moscow’s influence in the region.

As the future economic condition of the region is uncertain, both countries should be wary of their relationship with Russia, whether social or economic, as to avoid being imposed sanctions on by the West, as their relations could be regarded as giving assistance as third parties in evading sanctions. It is crucial for both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to be aware of the potential risks and benefits of their growing economic connections with Russia.

Sardor Allayarov is a Research Assistant at Centre for Analysis, Reporting and Monitoring, located in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is a former Research Intern at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Budapest, Hungary.

Image: Khikmatilla Ubaydullaev/Shutterstock.

The most significant development during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent trip to Israel and the West Bank had nothing to do with his visit. Blinken’s low-key suggestions for diffusing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians signify the rapidly shrinking U.S. diplomatic footprint on what was for many years a key component of U.S. policy in the region.

Far more newsworthy and historically significant was the publication by an obscure Israeli ministry of the annual population increase of the settler population in the more than 200 settlements in the West Bank.

The report by the Ministry of the Interior’s Population Registry notes that Israel’s settler population has grown to more than 500,000 in the West Bank proper and more than 200,000 in the settlements of annexed East Jerusalem.

Quantifying the continued, inexorable increase in Israel's settlement population continues a trend as old as the occupation itself. For more than half a century, no matter which Israeli government—left, right, or center—has wielded power, Israel’s settlement population and the number of Israeli settlements have increased. In the ongoing contest between the Israelis and Palestinians over control and sovereignty, there is no better barometer of Israel's success and the concurrent dangers not only to the prospect of Palestinian sovereignty, once considered the key to regional stability, but also to the health of Israel’s own democracy.

The ministry document portrays a settlement enterprise that is growing consistently throughout the West Bank. This includes those settlements in areas of East Jerusalem, formally annexed by Israel, with a population of more than 200,000, and the ring of large settlement areas around Jerusalem comprising so-called “Greater Jerusalem.” The population increase includes settlements in the sparsely populated Jordan Valley as well as those in the highlands of Judea and Samaria, home to the current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich was born in a Golan Heights settlement and still resides in the heartland of the Block of the Faithful settlement movement, which has been at the vanguard of attempts to “grab and settle” throughout the West Bank for the last half-century.

In addition to the growth of these formal, authorized settlements, so-called illegal settlements and outposts initially established without formal government approval over the last twenty-five years continue to increase in number and population. It should be no small matter that successive Israeli governments have committed to dismantling these outposts without practical effect. Indeed, U.S. administrations have long ceased to even ask, let alone demand, that Israel keep such commitments made to Washington.

Over the last fifty years, there has been only one meaningful (if fleeting) obstacle to the increase in Israel’s settlement population: the violence that accompanied the second intifada between 2000 and 2005.

The insecurity produced by the Palestinian uprising, however, merely reduced the annual increase in the settlement population. In contrast, diplomacy sponsored by the United States—beginning with the 1977 “autonomy talks” and continuing throughout the long moribund Oslo process that commenced in 1992—failed to constrain, and arguably facilitated, the increase. Indeed, an objective assessment of this era can only conclude that one of the key objectives of the diplomatic processes of the last generation was the extraordinary increase in settlements and settlers.

The Biden administration’s current engagement in Palestine continues to be based on the assumption the Palestinian security services must deliver the goods to Israel, and protect its settlers and soldiers, without any prospect of the basic payoff long awaited by the Palestinians: independence, sovereignty, and the retreat of the Israel Defense Forces and settlers to a recognized border. If the Oslo Accords at their very best hinted at such an outcome, it has been clear since Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002 that there is no real prospect of any significant Israeli security or settlement retreat in the West Bank, and that diplomatic efforts led by the United States to confront this reality and transform occupation into independence and sovereignty have failed.

The United States, including the current administration, long ago surrendered to the inexorable increase in Israeli settlements. No serious diplomacy between the parties has been conducted since the George W. Bush administration, and it has been more than a decade since the Americans even considered a diplomatic effort to freeze, let alone reverse, the growth of settlements.

In the absence of such a “diplomatic horizon” based on the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, inventive diplomats have come up with a series of quick fixes in an effort to maintain the fiction of diplomatic progress and U.S. engagement. At best, these efforts treat the less desirable symptoms of continuing occupation—notably Palestinian opposition to Israel’s territorial fait accompli—rather than confronting the cause, at the heart of which is Israel’s long-practiced effort to create “facts on the ground.” So, for example, U.S. engagement is now focused on yet another West Bank security plan, which, yet again, aims to square the circle of mobilizing popular Palestinian support for institutions—security and otherwise—that have woefully failed to protect Palestinians, and their political patrimony, from what they see as a major political, economic, and oftentimes personal threat: settlers and settlements.

Geoffrey Aronson is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former advisor to the EU and others on regional political and security issues.

Image: Paparazzza/Shutterstock.com.

The recent thaw in relations between Australia and China may not come as a surprise to those who have been closely monitoring the two nations' interactions. Some had speculated that a change in Australia's policy toward China would occur under the leadership of Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese, who succeeded Scott Morrison as prime minister and is known for his more flexible approach to China. However, the shift in Australia-China relations over the past year cannot be attributed solely to a change in leadership.

The Early Policy Shift

For over a decade, leaders from Australia's Labor Party have generally adopted a more flexible approach towards China, recognizing the importance of engagement for the nation's interests in areas such as trade, national security, and climate change. This approach has appeared in the foreign policies of former Labor leaders Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and Albanese is no exception. Upon assuming office, one of Albanese's top priorities was to reshape Australia's policy towards China, moving away from Morrison's hawkish stance.

Despite his strong position on national security and human rights issues, Albanese's government has adopted a more flexible approach in its dealings with China, seeking dialogue to rekindle bilateral cooperation on key issues. This change in foreign policy has made the revival of Australia-China relations more feasible than under the previous leadership. China, too, has played a role in the turnaround of relations. In January 2022, China appointed Xiao Qian, a former ambassador to Indonesia known for his professional communication style and moderate tone, as its new ambassador to Australia. The move of sending a “non-wolf-warrior” diplomat was seen as a signal of China's willingness to repair relations with Australia and modify its aggressive diplomatic approach. Since Xiao took office, he has been vocal about restoring Australia-China relations. For example, in an event held at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute, Xiao stated, “These are the areas where we should continue to conduct constructive dialogue, to minimize the differences if possible, and to enlarge our common grounds if possible.”

In addition, the congratulatory message sent by Chinese premier Li Keqiang to Albanese after the election was another significant indication of China's desire to improve relations. In his statement, Li said that “China stands ready to work with Australia to learn from the past, look to the future and push forward the sound and stable development of a bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership by adhering to the principles of mutual respect and win-win results.” This message, along with previous statements from China's top diplomat in Australia, signaled a new tone in China's policy towards Australia and created a favorable condition for the Albanese government's future efforts to repair relations with China.

The policy change on both sides engendered a more favorable environment for engagement, particularly in the latter half of 2022 and early 2023, laying the groundwork for a potential improvement of Australia-China relations.

Unfreezing Diplomatic Engagement

With a more conducive atmosphere for engagement, Australia and China began to boost their high-level diplomatic interactions. In June 2022, Australian defense minister Richard Marles met his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. This marked the first high-level contact between the two nations in three years, signaling improved relations between Australia and China.

At the time, few believed that such engagement meant significant progress had been made in Australia-China relations, as several core disagreements on security, trade, and human rights remained unresolved. Yet, as it was the first high-level contact between the two countries in three years and came just three weeks after the inauguration of the Albanese government, it signaled meaningful progress in unfreezing bilateral relations, especially in light of the ongoing geopolitical competition in the Indo-Pacific region as well as the disputes between the two countries. This swift diplomatic arrangement also demonstrated a shared willingness to restart diplomatic dialogue.

Although there are still contentious disagreements between Australia and China, Canberra’s largest trade partner, efforts to improve relations have continued. Following a defense ministerial meeting in Singapore, Albanese aimed to seize the momentum to further thaw ties. In an interview with ABC News, Albanese emphasized the importance of dialogue with China. "Common sense tells us that, despite our differences, we need to maintain open lines of communication with our largest trading partner. I look forward to continued engagement between ministers of our respective governments,” said Albanese.

Albanese's positive message was later echoed by a top Chinese diplomat. In July 2022, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong met with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministerial meeting in Indonesia. This marked the first meeting of the two countries' foreign ministers since 2019. During the meeting, Wang said, “China is ready to re-examine, re-calibrate, and reinvigorate bilateral ties in the spirit of mutual respect and work towards restoring relations to a positive trajectory.” This sentiment was further echoed in November 2022 when Wang Yi had a positive exchange on a phone call with Wong ahead of multiple international events. It is highly likely that the call was to ensure a positive diplomatic atmosphere ahead of the Albanese-Xi meeting at the G20 leaders’ summit.

The following week, Australia-China relations achieved a major diplomatic breakthrough. Chinese premier Li and Albanese met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Cambodia, marking the highest-level dialogue between the two nations before the upcoming leaders’ meeting. More critically, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Albanese on the sideline of the G20 summit a few days after Li’s meeting with Albanese, marking the first leader-level dialogue between the two countries in three years. Not only did the meeting signify the stabilization of Australia-China relations, but it also set a positive trajectory for future developments.

Indeed, diplomatic engagement between Australia and China became more frequent in the months following the Albanese-Xi meeting. The second defense ministerial meeting of the year took place ahead of the ASEAN defense ministers meeting in Cambodia, shortly after the Albanese-Xi meeting. About a month after the Alabnese-Xi meeting, Wong's visit to Beijing marked a crucial step forward for Australia-China relations, as it led to the resumption of the Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, which had been suspended in 2018. The joint statement of the dialogue affirmed that "the two sides agreed to maintain high-level engagement and to commence or restart dialogue" in areas ranging from trade to climate change, signaling a renewed commitment to bilateral cooperation.

After Wong's visit to Beijing, further signs of improvement in Australia-China relations began to emerge. In January 2023, Assistant Trade Minister Tim Ayres met with China's vice minister of commerce, Wang Shouwen, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where they agreed to hold a virtual meeting of top trade officials in the coming weeks. This development is particularly significant, as trade has been a major source of contention in bilateral relations in recent years. Additionally, the public health agencies of the two countries also held a virtual dialogue in advance of the meeting of trade officials in Davos. This sequence of events may indicate that China-Australia relations are on a path toward a new era.

Disparate Strategic Considerations

For Australia, one of the main motives for improving ties with China is resolving trade disputes to revamp the Australian economy. Such trade disputes have cost billions of dollars in losses across a range of Australian industries, including wine, coal, lobster, and beef. Rather than taking the subject matter to the inefficient international trade framework, Albanese has preferred to address this issue bilaterally. He has vowed to eliminate trade impediments to Australian products and is willing to fix trade ties with China.

Despite the Albanese government’s requests for tariffs to be removed, progress on this front was slow until July 2022, when there were discussions on ending the ban on coal exports to China. This development, along with others, suggested that Albanese's diplomatic approach was bearing fruit. For example, bans on Australian products such as coal have gradually been removed in recent months, and tariffs on other Australian products are also expected to be removed. Additionally, a trade minister meeting is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks, providing a chance for both sides to engage in trade-related issues.

Aside from trade, a stabilized relationship with China provides opportunities for the Albanese government to refine cooperation with China on the key areas of education, tourism, and climate change. In the field of education, for example, China’s large population can provide Australia with massive numbers of talent and funds. The number of Chinese students in Australian higher education has decreased for two years in a row. Yet the stable relationship between the two nations with the easing pandemic restrictions of both countries is expected to attract many Chinese students this year. Similarly, improving Australia-China relations can boost Australia's economy by attracting more Chinese tourists this year.

Perhaps most importantly, a positive relationship with China, coupled with regular dialogue, can help manage competition between the two nations and ensure that it does not escalate into unnecessary conflict. The defense minister meeting in Singapore in June 2022 proved this point. The meeting allowed both sides to frankly discuss pressing issues, such as the dangerous interception of an Australian aircraft by a Chinese fighter jet. This could lower the risk of misjudgments in critical times, preventing conflicts from occurring.

China, on the other hand, has different strategic considerations. Firstly, as a key security and economic actor in the Indo-Pacific region, Australia is a critical regional ally of the United States. If China insists on its aggressive diplomatic approach toward Australia, it will only push Australia toward the camp of the United States, making the “anti-China club” stronger. In contrast, by mitigating tensions with Australia, China can prevent the anti-China coalition from growing.

Secondly, China seeks to improve its ties with Australia as part of its major effort to boost its global image, moving away from its “wolf-warrior” diplomacy. This shift is aimed at repairing damaged relationships and enhancing cooperation with key actors, including Australia, South Korea, and several European countries.

Lastly, China's domestic challenges, including a decline in economic growth, a deteriorating demographic outlook, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, have compelled Beijing to shift its policy priorities inward. In this context, China has mitigated tensions with many regional players in order to avoid creating additional problems abroad. This will allow China to address its pressing domestic issues and sustain its national development, particularly its economy. Moreover, by stabilizing relations with Australia and other nations, China has constructed a favorable environment to re-engage with the global community and reinvigorate its economy through bilateral economic initiatives.

Overall, it is certain that Australia-China relations are much more stable than a year ago. This trend will likely be sustained in the first half of 2023 as both sides continue to engage and seek to address controversial issues. However, many existing disputes over security, human rights, and ideological issues remain unaddressed. To that end, it will not be surprising if these disagreements challenge Australia-China ties in the future.

Ray Weichieh Wang is a freelance analyst and contributor for several media outlets, focusing on diplomacy and politics in the Indo-Pacific. His research interests center on international relations in the Indo-Pacific, focusing on China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. His pieces have appeared in The National Interest, The Diplomat, The News Lens, among other outlets. Wang holds a BS degree in Diplomacy and International Relations from Tamkang University.

Image: Kaliva / Shutterstock.com.

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